chicken tiller

[homewardbound]

Does anyone know how long it would take a single chicken to dig up all of the vegetation in a 4 foot by 4 foot area? I am trying to figure out a way to use chickens in a rotation scheme in a vegetable garden. I figure Id plant a cover crop to improve the soil and then let chickens do the work of tilling the soil and then plant a vegetable crop.

 

[momofdrew]

I would think it would depend on the size of the chicken...my silkies can displace soil quite fast when they are taking there dust bath...

 

[desertlady]

5 of my chickies help me tilled the dirt, they love to help!, Plus I helped the more by digging in with shovel and they do the rest !!!

 

[Ridgerunner]

I think the main variables are your climate, what shape the turf is in when you start, and how well you want the ground worked.

The climate part is partly how wet it is when you are doing this, but also if the stuff is growing or is it dormant. If it is wet, it doesn't take them long to really tear it up. A well establishged turf versus an area with just some new growth in it can make a big difference. I don't know how established your cover crop is. It won't take them too long to eat the green stuff coming up, but if you want them to scratch up the roots and eat them too, that can take a lot longer, especially on established turf.

It's really hard to set a time frame with all those unknowns, but thinking when I tried to tractor 8 chickens in a 64 square foot tractor, I had to move it every two or three days to keep them in green stuff and that was on well established turf. If it rained, two days was stretching it. It got pretty filthy in there pretty quickly. But the roots and sod were not tilled like you would want. I'd guess a couple of weeks to really kill out the growth if it is established, but that could really vary either way. It just might get kind of filthy in there after this long.

Hopefully someone else can kick in that has done what you are talking about with better help.

 

[Stubbornhillfarm]

Maybe Kassaundra will chime in. In know that she has a really cool set up for chicken rotation in her garden. You may be able to find an old post from her on this subject that may give you some insight.

 

[Jared77]

I'm curious to hear your rotational scheme. And why just one bird? I don't have any insight into how fast or slow sorry but I would like to hear what your trying to do.

 

[Kassaundra]

I have a rotating chicken garden / run set up here is the thread I started it has some pics

http://www.theeasygarden.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=31215

I have anywhere from 9 to 15 chickens in each garden/coop right now 9 in each. I haven't kept up w/ this thread like I should, when I have more time later today or this week I'll probably update it.

Eating the green stuff and bugs is one thing they will do very well at that, but I have runner grass and lots of it, they don't kill it out by any stretch of the imagination. They will eat most of the green out, but you are still left w/ digging out the roots. This is my second year into this style of gardening I have had successes and failures, also if I were starting over there are some changes I would make to my system, fewer individual gardens to rotate through, and a built in moat w/ each coop / garden is one huge change I would make.

Before I started this I kept hearing how great of "tillers" the chickens were and how much they would dig up the garden / yard, trust me when I say that is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay overstated. They are awesome at what they do, and can add a lot to a garden system, but if you have a perfectly tilled garden spot in your imagination, it isn't going to happen. They will eat out most of the green, and a lot of the bugs, they will dig a couple of chicken sized divets in the ground for dust bathing, and if you go in and dig w/ a shovel they will gladly snatch any and all bugs you displace, but you will have to remove the grass roots and if you leave a sod of dirt/grass overturned thinking they will dig through it removing the dirt in a hunt for ground insects, they won't, your overturned clumps of dirt and root will be left untouched.

I'm unsure about what specific info you are looking for, but if you have any specific questions I will do my best to answer based on my experience w/ this so far.

It takes my 9 chickens a couple of weeks to clean out all or most of the vegetation in a 20 x 20 x 3 foot garden (some green they never eat)

 

[homewardbound]

I'm curious to hear your rotational scheme. And why just one bird? I don't have any insight into how fast or slow sorry but I would like to hear what your trying to do.

Ive asked about this on other boards off and on in recent years and I have gotten various estimates:

3 chickens in a 4x4 bed would need at most just a week to dig everything up with 2 weeks needed for the manure to compost before I can plant anything.

6 chickens would need just 5 days to dig up a 4x4 area.

I am basing my plans on a 4 foot by 4 foot area for the sake of using Mel Bartholomews square foot gardening. Ideally I would have a 3 phase rotation scheme with chickens used to dig up the soil between each phase: 1. Vegetable crop for humans 2. Forage crop for the chickens 3. Cover crop for the soil. But based on what Ive been told the amount of time needed for the chickens to do the digging I would still be waiting for plants to grow in the other beds so I wouldnt have beds to move the chickens to, so I couldnt simply move the chickens from bed to bed on a constant schedule.

 

[homewardbound]

I have a rotating chicken garden / run set up here is the thread I started it has some pics

http://www.theeasygarden.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=31215

I have anywhere from 9 to 15 chickens in each garden/coop right now 9 in each. I haven't kept up w/ this thread like I should, when I have more time later today or this week I'll probably update it.

Eating the green stuff and bugs is one thing they will do very well at that, but I have runner grass and lots of it, they don't kill it out by any stretch of the imagination. They will eat most of the green out, but you are still left w/ digging out the roots. This is my second year into this style of gardening I have had successes and failures, also if I were starting over there are some changes I would make to my system, fewer individual gardens to rotate through, and a built in moat w/ each coop / garden is one huge change I would make.

Before I started this I kept hearing how great of "tillers" the chickens were and how much they would dig up the garden / yard, trust me when I say that is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay overstated. They are awesome at what they do, and can add a lot to a garden system, but if you have a perfectly tilled garden spot in your imagination, it isn't going to happen. They will eat out most of the green, and a lot of the bugs, they will dig a couple of chicken sized divets in the ground for dust bathing, and if you go in and dig w/ a shovel they will gladly snatch any and all bugs you displace, but you will have to remove the grass roots and if you leave a sod of dirt/grass overturned thinking they will dig through it removing the dirt in a hunt for ground insects, they won't, your overturned clumps of dirt and root will be left untouched.

I'm unsure about what specific info you are looking for, but if you have any specific questions I will do my best to answer based on my experience w/ this so far.

It takes my 9 chickens a couple of weeks to clean out all or most of the vegetation in a 20 x 20 x 3 foot garden (some green they never eat)

I appreciate all this. I have grandparents on both sides of my family who were farmers at some point in their lives so Ive been around gardening since I was born. I have over 30 years experience with my own vegetable garden so I well know to take a lot of what gets said in gardening books with a grain of salt. But I have congestive heart failure and severe arthritis so I cannot afford to not investigate any possible labor-saving method I run across.

 

[homewardbound]

I have a rotating chicken garden / run set up here is the thread I started it has some pics

http://www.theeasygarden.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=31215

More and more I am thinking that something like this is what I would have to use because chickens need rotating more often than plants do. I am curious, though, about collecting the manure in your kind of set up. From an environmental standpoint it is better to turn manure into natural gas with a methane digester and then use whats left for fertilizer than it is to simply add the manure to the soil because the methane digester allows you to extract more resources from the food that the chickens eat. Does your rotation scheme allow any manure to be collected? Also, have you considered growing things specifically to feed the chickens and taking what you grow to the chickens so they can have the benefit of free range without having to have free range?